Eccentricities
by AwkwardFruitcake
Summary: Nora is quite possibly the strangest person Deacon has ever traveled with, and that's saying something.
1. Chapter 1

"Wait!" Nora held out her arm, stopping Deacon, and she dropped into a crouch. "I don't like the sound of this."

Deacon looked around, examining their surroundings from behind his sunglasses. They were trekking through the forest west of the Charles river. According to Nora, there were a band of raiders that were posing a threat to Starlight Drive In. He couldn't see how that was possible, given that Starlight was over five miles away; not an easy travel in the Wasteland. Nora seemed to have the same opinion: she accepted the task from Minuteman Garvey with some grumbling. However, she didn't have the heart to turn the man down, and here they were.

"What?" Deacon asked, scanning the trees and coming up with nothing. "Where?"

Nora cocked her head towards him. "You don't hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"The music. It's gotten loud and intense." She paused for a moment, then said, "There's a lot of bass."

She did this a lot; talking about things no one else could see, or noises that didn't exist. At first, he had thought she was just eccentric. But Nora had remained in stasis in a pod for over two hundred years. It was very easy to assume something had gone wrong during those centuries, and it was a concept Deacon was visiting more and more. He didn't mention his concerns, however.

"Lucky," he said. "I wish I had my own personal soundtrack."

Nora shot him a strange look, then brought her pistol to attention and crept along. "We need to get out of here. Something's watching us."

They continued moving, twigs snapping softly underfoot, when something stirred in the trees up ahead. Deacon had his shotgun trained forward, as well as Nora, as the creature buzzed.

A fat bloatfly, glistening in the sun, carried itself through the trees with its undersized wings. It buzzed at them angrily. With one shot from her gun, the insect exploded into a fountain of bloody green goo.

Deacon lowered his gun. "I think we found your pursuer," he remarked with a wry grin. The bloatfly twitched in the grass.

Nora laughed. "Not exactly what I was expecting," she confessed. She kicked the bug with her boot and it slid down a slight hill, vanishing into the brush. The music in her head, which had climaxed with the sound of drums and shrieking violins, began to calm back into a steady ambience.


	2. Chapter 2

The ghoul's clouded black eyes glistened. "Really? You… you will?"

Nora pat the Vault-Tec rep's shoulder, looking over him at Deacon, who shrugged. "Of course," she said with a smile, focusing back on him. "I visit Sanctuary every week or so. I won't forget to stop and say hi."

"Okay. I'll head over there right now. You promise you'll come visit, right? I'll see you there!"

The Vault-Tec rep ghoul walked away, eager to start a new life helping the settlement at Sanctuary. Nora watched him go, her newsboy cap tucked under her arm. Once he was gone, she fit it back over her hair.

"That was… interesting," Deacon remarked. "Did you know that guy?"

"A long time ago," was her cryptic answer.

Deacon caught on, following her as they began walking down the stairs of Hotel Rexford. "It couldn't have been, let's say, two hundred years ago, could it?"

"Maybe," Nora replied.

They reached the balcony that overlooked the hotel's lobby. A dinky light bulb hung from the ceiling, flickering, and there wasn't much business this afternoon. Fred was mooning around, waiting for potential customers, and Claire was yelling at him to stop sitting around collecting dust.

"I need to head for Diamond City and talk with Nick," Nora was saying as she walked, "because I finished one of the case files he had sitting around in his office. While I'm there, I'll pick up some ammo, and…"

She veered towards the balcony railing, and Deacon stopped, confused as to where she was headed.

"... I think I have a few stims in storage back at home base. We can stop there and load up on supplies before we head out again. Does that sound good?" Nora set both her palms on the railing, disrupting a thin layer of dust, and checked below.

"Whatever you say-" His sentence broke off with a squawk when the woman deftly swung both legs over the railing and promptly disappeared over the side. There was a thump and a small grunt, followed by someone's surprised exclamation.

"_What the hell…?_" He heard Claire say.

Deacon jogged to the balcony's edge and looked over. "Boss! Are you okay?"

Nora dusted off her vault suit and ignore the gaping stares of Fred and the few onlookers sitting at the bar. Her newsboy cap had come askew, and she straightened it. She continued walking like she hadn't just dropped ten feet from the second floor. When she reached the double doors, she turned around and spotted Deacon still standing at the balcony. "Are you coming?" Nora asked.

Deacon laughed to himself. "I won't be making a fancy exit like you. I like my knees intact." He saw her roll her eyes, and he made his way down to the lobby.

_Author's Note: Does anyone else not take the stairs (in video games) unless they absolutely have to, or am I just a person of very little patience?_


End file.
